Conventionally, after making a floor plan manually or automatically and performing detailed placement and routing on the basis of the floor plan which is made thus, it is checked if there is some problem of timing, degree of congestion, or the like. As the result of check, if there is some problem, the floor plan is corrected manually.
The background-art techniques on a floor planning device and a floor planning method are disclosed in, e.g., the following Patent Documents 1 and 2.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Application Laid Open Gazette No. 2004-13432
Patent Document 2: Japanese Patent Application Laid Open Gazette No. 2004-334565
Now, there is no method of quantitatively evaluating a floor plan which is made. Therefore, even if it is intended to make a rough evaluation to check whether the floor plan is good or not, it is necessary to make a timing analysis or the like after performing detailed placement and routing and this disadvantageously requires much time to make an evaluation.
Further, as the result of evaluation, if it is found that the floor plan needs to be corrected, a designer has to find the problem by trial and error to correct the floor plan and this disadvantageously reduces efficiency.